Thanks to the ingenious programmers at STO, yesterday’s Indians game wasn’t televised. Someday, someone will explain to me the fantastic strategy of creating a network that chooses not to televise the events that it was created to televise. I imagine the decision goes something like this:
Production Manager: Hey guys, I was thinking about not televising tomorrow’s game.
Voice of Reason: That seems silly. I mean we already have the crew here in Minnesota, and it’s not like Rick and Matt have anything else to do tomorrow. You do realize that Minnesota has the highest per capita rate of alcoholism in the country, right? I’m just saying, giving everyone the day off might not be smart.
Production Manager: That’s a great point, but we have at least two high school football games that took place three weeks ago that we’ve only televised 17 times in the last three days. On top of that, we have, like, 29 hours of Joe Thomas shooting animals that’s just sitting on the cutting-room floor, so I think the Indians will have to take a backseat.
Voice of Reason: But wasn’t this network CREATED so that we could televise Indians’ games? It seems…untoward…to replace them with filler.
Production Manager: Quiet, you. Keep that up and I’ll stick you on All Bets Are Off.
And scene.
Anyway, from what I can gather from the play-by-play data, the game was inherently unwatchable, so the Production Manager might have had a point about going with the Joe Thomas footage.
Things started off well enough, with the offense scoring in the first inning. Drew Sutton drew a walk, and after a Choo flyout, Hafner and Duncan contributed singles to drive in the Indians’ first run. (I misspelled “only” in that last sentence, see if you can find the mistake.)
And for awhile, one run looked like all Carrasco might need. He was throwing a one-hit shutout through five innings. On the other hand, that one hit was classified as a “double to DEEP left” in Yahoo’s play-by-play data. Furthermore, he walked three and hit a batter, so it doesn’t appear he was his dominant self. And by “doesn’t appear,” I mean that my evil supercomputer game recap made him look bad. I blame STO for this.
Sure enough, in the sixth, the floodgates opened: single, strikeout, stolen base, strikeout, double, double, single, single, fielder’s choice. I’m sure I could write a more interesting sentence than that if I had, ya know, been able to see the game, but talk to the imaginary Program Director about that. All right, I’ll stop moaning about STO now. Anyway, the Twins went up 3-1, and that was certainly all the offense they’d need against our “lineup.”
So just for fun, the Indians brought in Aaron Laffey to pitch the seventh. You remember Aaron Laffey, right? The guy who throws softer than Andy Marte? Yeah, you remember him. Laffey let up three hits and two runs. I didn’t see it, but I assume his performance looked like this.
The Indians offense had no answers yesterday, and once again the team avoided avoiding a potential 100-loss season.
Perhaps some home-cooking can set ‘em straight? The Indians start their final homestand of the year tonight against the Kansas City Royals. Mitch Talbot will make his triumphant return to the rotation, and will be facing something called a “Sean O’Sullivan” that has a 7.69 ERA but has somehow pitched enough innings to have a 1-6 record. More on this Battle Royale as it develops.
Photo Credit: Jim Mone/AP
